


No Time or Place

by GoddessofBirth



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, I'm Sorry, M/M, Past major character deaths, all character deaths take place before this story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 07:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5119574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoddessofBirth/pseuds/GoddessofBirth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What little is left he’s entrusted to Danny, and when cupped in his hands it glows brighter than anything in Scott’s life ever has.</p>
<p>Based on a prompt from Anonymous, who asked for Scott/Danny and the song "Midland" by Arthur Beatrice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Time or Place

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Scott looks up from his seat on the bleachers, shielding his eyes from the rising sun as Danny settles in beside him. He holds a coffee in either hand and passes one to Scott, who takes a grateful sip.

“Thanks.”

Danny smiles briefly and then they sit in silence, staring silently at the overgrown lacrosse field. It’s haunted, along with the abandoned, slowly decaying school, or so the story goes. How else can you explain the fact that all the murders and mysterious disappearances stopped after Beacon Hills High relocated across town, to a bright and shiny new building?

No one has put together that the school relocation had taken place the summer after Danny and Scott’s class had graduated. Or if they have, they’ve brushed it off as coincidence. It has to have been the building that was the cause. Not the students.

If only.

“You should be in bed,” Danny says finally, still looking at the field and not at Scott. If Scott listens closely, he can almost hear Coach’s shrill screams and Jackson’s triumphant whoops. Maybe it’s haunted after all.

“I know.” He’s just come off the graveyard shift at Beacon Hills Memorial and exhaustion pulls heavy at his eyelids. Just not heavily enough to actually lull him to sleep. “I just…I couldn’t. Not today. Not when—” He breaks off. “I’m afraid I’m forgetting their faces. Sometimes when I close my eyes I can barely see Allison’s eyes. Sometimes I picture Stiles, but the hair is wrong. I know it’s wrong but I can’t figure out exactly why. I can’t—”

“You know it’s not your fault. You did everything you could.”

“I should have done more.” This isn’t a new conversation. They have it on and off throughout the year. Sometimes over the dinner table, when Scott’s face is creased a little more than usual. Sometimes in the car outside the grocery store, when they’d run into Sheriff Stilinski and neither of them knew what to say. Sometimes in the dead of night when Scott wakes up screaming and Danny can only wrap him in his arms until his heart rate returns to normal and the tears can start.

And today. Always, always today.

“You did everything you could,” Danny repeats, turning away from staring out at his own memories to look at Scott. You were a true alpha, not a messiah.”

“They needed a messiah.”

“They needed you. And they had you. They saved thousands of people. You saved thousands of people. This whole town. They wouldn’t have chosen differently, even if they could have seen the future. You know that. You can’t save everyone, Scott.”

“I know. I know. But I should have saved _them_.” With that he loses the last of his composure and turns into Danny’s shoulder, tears falling hot down his cheeks and soaking into Danny’s hoodie.

Today, on every today, on the anniversary of when the world went to hell and they had had to drag it back over blood and bone and bodies, he can hear them louder than usual. Their shouts. Their screams. The last sounds they had made before they died. Stiles. Isaac. Jackson. Parrish. Ethan. Erica and Boyd and Allison make guest appearances, too, for all that they died long before.

Still on his head.

Still on his shoulders.

Some days he doesn’t understand how Danny can stand to look at him, much less love him, when his hands are still covered in Jackson and Ethan’s blood.

Lydia doesn’t. Look at him, that is. Or even talk to him, beyond brief, perfunctory holiday calls. She always calls on this day, though, to check and see if he’s okay, before she asks to speak to Danny. It feels more like penance than friendship. But she had lived, just like Malia and Kira. The three of them take care of each other, just like he and Danny take care of each other. Malia and Kira are kinder, at least, when they meet by chance. Something in Lydia had died with Parrish. Scott doesn’t blame her; almost all of him had died that day, too.

What little is left he’s entrusted to Danny, and when cupped in his hands it glows brighter than anything in Scott’s life ever has.

“Hello, boys.”

Scott jerks upright as Danny features twist into something uncharacteristically hateful. “Go away, Peter,” he spits, a hand coming up to chest level as if he’s somehow shielding Scott from the man lolling casually against the rusted fencing. “Nobody wants you here.”

Peter. Who had of course survived. Because Peter, like the Dude, always abides. It’s unfair. It’s so unfair. But what is life, if not that? If it were fair, it would Stiles, or Ethan, or hell, even Jackson sitting here, and Scott would be the one rotting in the dirt. But he’s not, and fairness aside, he’ll never regret he’s the one wearing Danny’s ring.

“What?” Peter gasps, hand to chest as if he’s actually offended, “am I not allowed to mourn? Is it inconceivable the monster grieves? I lost people, too, you know.”

“Shut up, Peter.” This isn’t from Scott, or even from Danny, but from Derek, who is softly treading across the field, Chris Argent a silent shadow beside him.

Where Peter abides, Mr. Argent seems cursed to survive, unable to leave the town that holds the graves of everyone he ever loved. Growing thinner and grimmer with every passing year, stopping by every month or so to make sure Danny and Scott are doing okay and have enough to eat, for all that they both are well paid professionals and on the far side of thirty. It’s all he can do for Allison now, and they wouldn’t take that from him even if they wanted to.

“My dearest nephew.” Peter grins wryly as Derek and Chris reach the other side of the bleachers. “Your lack of familial love is disappointing. I’m sure my sister taught you better than that.”

It’s impossible to argue with Peter these days, and pointless, besides. He won’t remember it the next day, anyway. From the disarray of his hair and the dirt on his once expensive jeans, Scott guesses he’s been sleeping in the graveyard again, curled up next to Laura’s tombstone. In a day or two, Derek and Argent will coax him into letting them check him into a hotel, where he’ll bath and eat and talk about the good old days. He’ll smile and snap and snarl, and almost convince them he’s sane. Then in another month or so he’ll disappear again, until the next report of wolves and vagabonds surfaces.

They all stare at each other in silence as the minutes tick by. Then Peter takes a seat on the bottom bleacher, and Derek sits somewhere in the middle, and Argent stays standing, a quiet sentry that never quite stops watching. Just like they did last year, and the year before, and every year before that, all the way back to the first anniversary of their catastrophic failure.

None of them speak, because there’s nothing else to say, and Danny rubs small circles on the back of Scott’s hand with his thumb. Even after all this time, Scott can still smell the blood that soaks the field; the blood of their allies, the blood of their enemies, the blood of those that straddled the line between. Derek occasionally presses the back of his hand to his nose, as if to block the stench.

Eventually Scott falls asleep, and when he wakes, he and Danny are alone again. Danny gathers their cups and tugs Scott to his feet. “Time to go home so I can feed you,” he says lightly.

Scott nods agreeable and leans into Danny as they begin the walk home.


End file.
